


Learning Too Late What It Is To Not Drown

by Zayrastriel



Series: The Drowning 'verse [8]
Category: Actor RPF
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, Gen, Genocide, Zombie Apocalypse, from the POV of a zombie, fun times, species betrayal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 06:52:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zayrastriel/pseuds/Zayrastriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alyce is totally an optimist.<br/>Yeah, her parents are dead, yeah Australia’s overrun by fricking zombies, yeah okay she might, you know, be a member of the walking dead herself.<br/>But hey, she’s still alive.<br/>(For now, anyway.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning Too Late What It Is To Not Drown

**Author's Note:**

> The first part written from the POV of a zombie. Err. Enjoy?

See, the thing is, there’s not much difference between being a zombie and being human, especially after all the humans around have already either been turned or become zombie fodder barely two months after it _happened_ when Australia, fricking furnace that it is, is already starting to heat up to perfect zombie incubation temperature.

Also, the Olympics didn’t happen in Rio, because the whole zombie-human thing would probably be an issue.

(Everything has a positive side, right?)

So now they’re all kinda sane, and kinda human, apart from the skin and the freaky speed of movement and the really annoying and sort of terrifying blood lust (human flesh lust) thing.

And Malcolm Turnbull’s in power.  Apparently he ate Tony Abbott in Parliament.  A couple of Alyce’s friends seem to find it hilarious.  Alyce doesn’t really get it, herself, but whatever.  Laughing is good right now.

~

Sometime around Christmas, Alyce sits down and actually thinks about what’s so different being a zombie, why all the drunk people at this party (it’s a really bad party, by the way) are lying around crying weird mucus blood stuff about how much they miss being human.

Food doesn’t taste the same, for one.  Chocolate and artificial, over-processed stuff is  the same.  But chicken now tastes like cardboard, and beef feels like chicken.  As long as Alyce tries hard enough, she can keep the thoughts away of wanting to sink her teeth (they’re longer now, and tougher, ice cream doesn’t give her chills anymore) into human flesh and _tear_ , feel the adrenaline-pumped blood gush out of arteries in a spray and run through her body in an awesome-

 _Holy shit stooooop_.

 Overall, it’s not that bad.  Apart from the apocalypse, dystopia atmosphere but she supposes that can be put down more to the apocalypse and less to her being a zombie.

~

She doesn’t know why she called Fiona, doesn’t even remember how she got her number (did they go to a fandom convention together or something a year or two back?) 

It’s the best and worst thing in the world when she picks up and Alyce realises that she’s talking to a real human for the first time in almost a year.

July, 2017, eleven months after the world ended.  She’s pretty sure more exciting stuff’s meant to be happening than a phone call but whatever, she’s just gonna go ahead and freak out like a teenage girl (zombie, whatever.)

Also, she’s with Jared Leto.  _How cool is that??_

~

The Australian government isn’t particularly open regarding human-zombie interactions; but there’s enough of an active media that she finds out about a week after Ara tells her that there’s a thing going on with negotiating with zombies, sometime in early October.  It’s getting warm again, which Alyce would have hated before she got turned.

(By whom exactly, she has no idea whatsoever.)

Now, of course, she loves it.  Especially after the particularly cold winter (apparently 2017 has just broken all records for the coldest Australian winter ever), her dead-alive body is totally loving all the warmth that’s loosening her muscles and quickening her blood…well, as much as that’s possible when she doesn’t exactly have any blood.

Anyway, she’s sort of off-topic so apparently there’s a thing going on between humans and zombies.

Ara doesn’t sound particularly happy about that, but Alyce isn’t sure whether that’s because she’s going to feel worse about slaughtering tons of them a day (Ara sounds sort of normal on the phone but she’s talked to Raine and Lia and apparently she’s anything but normal) or if it’s because Alice down in Antarctica didn’t tell her about the whole thing.

As far as Alyce knows, the deal works something along the lines of splitting the world in half.  Or ¾ or whatever works.  As far as deals go, she supposes it works.  It’s sort of depressing to realise that she wouldn’t ever be able to see those of her friends who didn’t get turned but then again, she has no idea who’s alive and who isn’t so it’s not _too_ much of a loss.  She knows the cricket lover's somewhere in Germany, but everyone else was in either Australia or somewhere warm (i.e. zombie-fied) when the whole thing went down.

 

~

It’s a complete accident when she hears, day of cricket lover's birthday that they now use as a way to mourn the dead, mourn themselves, and watch Star Wars on repeat till they fall asleep.

She totally doesn’t mean to; she’s making a pit stop at one of the convenience stores that’s reopened for Oreos so she can make that cake she made once before for a Star Wars marathon too many years before.

“…And you don’t think that’s too bold?”

Alyce doesn’t know what makes her duck around the corner when she hears that voice.  Maybe it’s the fact that it’s cold, passionless, sort of like Palpatine but more boring, and therefore somehow much more evil.

A laugh, fake and humourless.  “Why does it matter? We know they’re planning on betraying the agreement, after all; we need to make the first move, and if that involves eradicating the last of the _human presence_ ” – he spits the word _human_ as though he never was one – “then we will do it.”

 _Blue Mountains_ , Alyce thinks, and then _shit_.

 

~

She doesn’t understand why, but all she knows is that it’s happening.  That the unturned are going to trust and trust and then before they have time to swallow the betrayal they’ll be dead.

Like the Jedi children but not as fictional,

~

 

The phone rings five times and then goes to voicemail, with the same annoying chick that she swears every single phone company used for the same recording.  “Hey, um, this is Alyce-“ Alyce begins, only to be cut off by a loud beep.

“ _Your voice message is being transcribed and will be sent as a message.  Have a good day._ ”

 _Damn it_.

Sighing, she scrolls aimlessly through her contacts, not really seeing any of the names – she tried, after all, that’s all she had to do, she can’t feel guilty now…

A name leaps out at her, glaring and obvious, like it’s suddenly branded into her brain or something.

 ** _Lia_**.

Ara’s friend in the Netherlands, she thinks.  The one with the satellite phone, whose number Alice gave her _in case of emergencies_ , whatever that means.

Alyce doesn’t have to.  She knows she doesn’t have to; fricking hell, she’s not even human anymore, it’s not like she owes them, she tried to call Fio and nothing happened-

 _All it takes for evil to happen is for good men to do nothing_.

“Gaaaah.”

It’s probably the whole zombie thing that leaves her empty hand trembling by her side as she presses _Call_ , green and innocent when it should be red and flashing with _Do Not Touch_.

_Ring._

_Ring._

_Ring._

_Ring._

_Ring._

_Rin-_

“ _Heello?  It’s Lia_.” 

The voice is breathless, like the other person had to run to make the phone.  Alyce wonders idly in the midst of painful, knotting terror, whether that might have been better for ~~everyone~~ her.

_And was it the whole zombie thing that made her this selfish, or was she always like this?_

“ _Hello_?”

She can just hang up.  She doesn’t have to do

I have to tell you something, and it’s important,” Alyce’s mouth says.  _Well, there goes that_.

“ _Sorry, um, who is this?_ ” 

“Alyce.  I’m one of Ara’s friends?”

“ _Ohh…the…_ ”

She rolls her eyes.  “Yeah, the zombie.”

“ _Lia?  Who is it?_ ”  It’s a guy’s voice, a guy who sounds vaguely familiar.  Her first thought is _Loki, Avengers, hahaha_ , and then _oh yeah, Fio said…_ and then _eww, so that’s why she was breathless.  Ewwww._

“ _You’re on speakerphone_ ,” Lia tells her after a moment, sounding slightly more distant but clearer.  “ _What’s wrong_?”

Alyce takes a breath, all thoughts of who’s doing…stuff…with who forgotten. 

(But still, _eww_.)

She stays on her bed throughout most of the conversation, only moving once to grab a massive Cadbury bar that she snagged while out stealing things from the local grocery store.  After a couple of horrified exclamations, Lia largely stays quiet.  The guy – Tom, oh god, Tom _Hiddleston_ , the guy everyone on the internet wanted to kidnap and murder slowly – asks most of the questions, in a quiet, serious voice.  Halfway through, he whispers something to Lia, something inaudible even with the totally not-awesome zombie senses Alyce has now.

“ _She’s just gone to find Ara and Raine_ ,” he explains. _“Raine knows someone with the British government.  He’ll help_.”

There’s a slight pang of guilt again.

But Fiona and the other humans on the mountains don’t deserve to die. 

Not like that, and Alyce for one knows that she and the other zombies have absolutely no right to kill them.

She absolutely refuses to feel guilty.

~

At about 2:00am on a Sunday morning, while everyone’s sleeping, three planes apparently land in the mountains, pick up every person they can and fly them to Antarctica.  Then come back and do the same.  The last planeloads almost don’t get out in time.

But they do.  About fifteen hours later, Alyce gets a text from Lia.

**_Fiona and Jared got into Heathrow an hour ago.  Thank you.  I know it was hard.  ARA_ **

She cries.

It’s really embarrassing, but she cries for an hour, before forcing her finger to press down on the DELETE button, to get rid of that text and everything before it, to clear her call history.

~

It’s all over the news, stiff-faced (ahaha good pun stiff-faced, zombies, yeah, right?  No?) reporters standing at the Blue Mountains human refugee camp; an invasion of property, while on the ABC, Bob Brown, who’s apparently returned to politics after being bitten, talks long and loud about the human right to self-defence, about a horrible secret plot to destroy humanity.  He’s shouted down immediately by Pauline Hanson.  Alyce’s roommates scoff at the very idea.

Alyce stays silent.

~

The police, or secret service or whatever they are now, track the phone call to Alyce while she’s locked in her room, talking on the phone to Alice. 

“Alyce Yu?”  A bang on the door.  “It’s the police.  Please open the door.”

“ _Alyce?  What’s happening_?”

“Gimme a sec,” Alyce murmurs into the phone, wincing as they bang again.

“Open the door!”

She swallows down her panic.  “Yeah alright, alright, I’m just getting changed!” Alyce calls out as she edges towards the window.  It’s barely big enough for her to fit through, but she can. 

There are people waiting for her before she’s turned the corner, but by that time she’s managed to crush her phone beneath her super-strong zombie feet.

Prison totally isn’t as cool as they show it in films.


End file.
